the log has some sort of an ending, in case things don't turn out well. I've always hated books that end "To be continued."
I thought long and hard about these, perhaps my last words. I was looking for something profound, something you could carve on my gravestone if you want to, but couldn't think of anything. Only that I'd rather be floating dead through space with five of my friends than be alive and alone.
See you in six months. Call me Mr. Positive.
The end.
You know what's funny? The cabin? It has a night light.
Beats of Seven
by Peter Orullian
Artwork by Walter Simon
----
Jimmy Nesbitt sat in the dark of a new moon on the Lincoln City beach and listened.
No wind.
No obnoxious birds.
No obnoxious lovers strolling.
Just Jimmy and his sound gear, capturing the roll of waves, the susurration of water over sand, the ticking of air bubbles popping as the water retreated back toward the ocean. It was the same sound he'd heard a hundred times before . . . until he detected something more, buried deep in the white noise of waves.
He looked around, irritated, expecting to see someone stomping through the sand with a portable stereo in one hand on their way to a midnight swim.
Nothing.
Even the occasional sweep of headlights had ceased, leaving the darkness unbroken and tranquil.
He was alone.
Jimmy reached quickly for his frequency filter, dialing the luminous knobs to try and isolate the pitch he thought he heard. His heart actually pounded in his chest -- something music hadn't done for him in quite some time.
And it totally surprised him.
The romance -- if it had ever really been there -- had long gone out of this job. Recording the ocean had been the only gig he could get once he quit session work in Los Angeles and Nashville, where musicianship had been replaced by packaging and sex appeal. If the market for
Pacific Ocean Scapes
-- the project that would take him up the entire west coast -- weren't so lucrative, he could never have endured the mindless sound-tracking of splashing water.
He narrowed in on the frequency, methodically muting levels where he could not hear the strange sound through his headphones. The rumble of white caps turning over on themselves fell away, the sizzle of water creeping up wet-packed sand disappeared as well. He kept at it, eager to identify this new tone, something he hadn't heard on any other beach south to San Diego.
After several more adjustments, his parametric equalizer began to spike only in the +10 kilohertz zone.
Jimmy pressed the ear cups of his Sony Pro Studio reference phones tighter against his head, sealing out further noise.
He gave a smile.
No mistake.
A trumpet.
Another sound engineer might not have known what he was hearing. But Jimmy had spent several years mixing studio jazz albums in New Orleans in the years before new age labels started throwing money at French Quarter musicians and recording the always hilarious "light jazz."
He knew from a trumpet.
That wasn't all, though.
If a little fuzzy through the processing he had to impose to create the discreet horn sound, the tone perfectly matched a Gillespie model horn -- something only the men playing on Bourbon Street or swank Manhattan dinner clubs in the early 30's would have used. Still, a badly soldered connection, an errant grain of sand, any number of things could have caused the tone.
But not when it moved in and out of melody.
Jimmy sat, compressing his phones against his ears, tweaking his EQ, recording snippets of what he was coming to think of as a song, then playing them back against the real-time music.
They were different.
The song seemed to live in the very rattle and hum of the ocean itself.
What the hell had he found? And could he sell it?
Watery light dawned behind Jimmy in the east. He'd spent all night listening, recording, filling three hard drives of the unique tonal aberration. Life stirred around him, folks walking pets, a few morning
I thought long and hard about these, perhaps my last words. I was looking for something profound, something you could carve on my gravestone if you want to, but couldn't think of anything. Only that I'd rather be floating dead through space with five of my friends than be alive and alone.
See you in six months. Call me Mr. Positive.
The end.
You know what's funny? The cabin? It has a night light.
Beats of Seven
by Peter Orullian
Artwork by Walter Simon
----
Jimmy Nesbitt sat in the dark of a new moon on the Lincoln City beach and listened.
No wind.
No obnoxious birds.
No obnoxious lovers strolling.
Just Jimmy and his sound gear, capturing the roll of waves, the susurration of water over sand, the ticking of air bubbles popping as the water retreated back toward the ocean. It was the same sound he'd heard a hundred times before . . . until he detected something more, buried deep in the white noise of waves.
He looked around, irritated, expecting to see someone stomping through the sand with a portable stereo in one hand on their way to a midnight swim.
Nothing.
Even the occasional sweep of headlights had ceased, leaving the darkness unbroken and tranquil.
He was alone.
Jimmy reached quickly for his frequency filter, dialing the luminous knobs to try and isolate the pitch he thought he heard. His heart actually pounded in his chest -- something music hadn't done for him in quite some time.
And it totally surprised him.
The romance -- if it had ever really been there -- had long gone out of this job. Recording the ocean had been the only gig he could get once he quit session work in Los Angeles and Nashville, where musicianship had been replaced by packaging and sex appeal. If the market for
Pacific Ocean Scapes
-- the project that would take him up the entire west coast -- weren't so lucrative, he could never have endured the mindless sound-tracking of splashing water.
He narrowed in on the frequency, methodically muting levels where he could not hear the strange sound through his headphones. The rumble of white caps turning over on themselves fell away, the sizzle of water creeping up wet-packed sand disappeared as well. He kept at it, eager to identify this new tone, something he hadn't heard on any other beach south to San Diego.
After several more adjustments, his parametric equalizer began to spike only in the +10 kilohertz zone.
Jimmy pressed the ear cups of his Sony Pro Studio reference phones tighter against his head, sealing out further noise.
He gave a smile.
No mistake.
A trumpet.
Another sound engineer might not have known what he was hearing. But Jimmy had spent several years mixing studio jazz albums in New Orleans in the years before new age labels started throwing money at French Quarter musicians and recording the always hilarious "light jazz."
He knew from a trumpet.
That wasn't all, though.
If a little fuzzy through the processing he had to impose to create the discreet horn sound, the tone perfectly matched a Gillespie model horn -- something only the men playing on Bourbon Street or swank Manhattan dinner clubs in the early 30's would have used. Still, a badly soldered connection, an errant grain of sand, any number of things could have caused the tone.
But not when it moved in and out of melody.
Jimmy sat, compressing his phones against his ears, tweaking his EQ, recording snippets of what he was coming to think of as a song, then playing them back against the real-time music.
They were different.
The song seemed to live in the very rattle and hum of the ocean itself.
What the hell had he found? And could he sell it?
Watery light dawned behind Jimmy in the east. He'd spent all night listening, recording, filling three hard drives of the unique tonal aberration. Life stirred around him, folks walking pets, a few morning
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